Guides & field notes

Getting more out of the systems you already run.

Plain notes from someone who ran a shop, not a software pitch. Most of these are about the same thing: the gaps between your ERP, your books, and the work nobody designed a system for — and what you can actually do about them.

AI enablement
Making AI actually useful for your operation
Everybody says "use AI." Nobody says how. Set up around how you work, loaded with your own knowledge, your data staying in your hands.
AI enablement
An AI knowledge base that knows your business
Free AI knows nothing about you. Load your procedures, specs, and know-how so everyone draws the same right answer — and it doesn't retire when your people do.
AI enablement
Making Microsoft Copilot actually useful
Most "we have Copilot" is the free chat that knows nothing about you. What it takes to make it know your business — or when a different tool fits better.
ERP augmentation
Getting real reports out of JobBOSS
When the answer to every question is "export it to Excel and figure it out" — what's actually possible, and how to stop living in spreadsheets.
ERP augmentation
When E2 can't tell you what you need to know
E2 / Shoptech runs the shop fine, but the numbers live in module silos. Closing the gap without ripping anything out.
ERP augmentation
Global Shop Solutions and the report-writer wall
You've got the data. Getting a straight, daily read out of it shouldn't take a power user and an afternoon.
ERP augmentation
Epicor Kinetic and the report you actually want
Powerful, and underused. Why BAQs and dashboards still don't hand you a clean daily read — and how to get one.
ERP augmentation
When M1's canned reports run out of road
ECI M1 runs the shop, but the answers stop where the built-in reports do. A clean read without living in Crystal or Excel.
ERP augmentation
Getting a clean read off Made2Manage
An aging install and a report writer that fights you. How to get the numbers out without replacing the ERP.
Where to start
Running on QuickBooks and a stack of spreadsheets
You're not ready for a full ERP, and you might not need one. What's worth automating first when the spreadsheets are the system.
Integration
Custom JobBOSS & QuickBooks automation
The standard sync handles invoices. Here's the work that lives in the gap the standard sync doesn't touch.
Operating gaps
Vendor PO acknowledgments that slip through
A changed due date nobody caught, an order that was never confirmed. A quiet watcher that flags only the exceptions.
Operating gaps
Faster quoting without an enterprise subscription
Quote turnaround caps how much work you can win. What a right-sized quoting tool actually does — and doesn't.
Operating gaps
Knowing job profitability before month-end
If the owner finds out a job lost money two weeks after it shipped, the number came too late to do anything with.
Operating gaps
Customer orders, keyed in by hand
POs arrive as PDFs and get re-typed into the ERP. Read each one, check it against the quote, draft the order — and flag what doesn't match.
Operating gaps
The retiring machinist problem
Thirty years of how-to walking out the door. Capturing setups, tool lists, and run notes tied to the part, before it's gone.
Local
Custom manufacturing software in West Michigan
Built by someone an hour up the road who ran a shop for a decade. Drivable, and fluent in how a shop actually runs.
Contact

Got one of these gaps?

First call's free — about 30 minutes, a straight conversation about how your operation runs and where it's leaking, not a demo. If there's something worth building, I'll say so; if there isn't, I'll say that too.

Email Jason See selected work →